Joe Baer was paddling on the Woonasquatucket River in the 1990’s and started to portage around a dam at what was then the rubble-strewn remnants from a mill fire at Riverside Mills. His hike through this neglected and toxic property, fenced off from the Olneyville neighborhood led to serving on the board of Woonasquatucket River Council and many subsequent connections to organizations, civic issues and neighborhoods in the years since.

He is currently the Director of Cityside at The Wheeler School which is based at the Waterfire Arts Center. Collaborating with dozens of community partners, students take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the twenty-five neighborhoods of Providence and crafting ways to address the many issues they learn about. Joe most values helping kids hear the stories of the people and places of the city.

Chris grew up in Rhode Island, works in Providence and lives nearby. A former journalist, Chris covered news from Block Island to Smith Hill including his last position at Providence Business News. Today, he works as an administrator at the Rhode Island School of Design and volunteers for a nonprofit theater on the side. He’s passionate about ensuring people have the knowledge they need to make informed choices about the world around them. And he reminds people often that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Carolina is Ecuadorian and has lived in Rhode Island for 25 years. She worked in the community through different organizations. She’s worked in the Providence library system for 20 years and currently hold the position of Latino Program Manager at the Providence Community Libraries. She coordinates educational and cultural programs such as: GED classes, citizenship, writers’ presentations, Book Fair, Reading Club and more activities for the Latino community. She studied interior design and decoration in her country. She’s also an entrepreneur in art, offering painting and mandala workshops for adults and especially for the elderly. Serving and contributing to the community is very important to her.

Roseanne Camacho came to Providence in the late 60s for graduate school. Apart from a decade, she has lived and raised her daughter in Elmwood, where she has volunteered with organizations since the early 70s, most recently with Friends of Knight Memorial Library. She taught at the Gordon School for over a decade before returning to graduate school for a Ph.D. in American Civilization at Brown University. Now a retired educator, she supports PVD Eye and its focus on Providence with enthusiasm.

Cynthia Gibson, Ph.D., is principal of Cynthesis Consulting, which has provided strategic planning, program development, evaluation, and communications assistance to hundreds of philanthropic institutions and nonprofits in the U.S. and internationally. Previously, Gibson was a program officer in the Democracy Program at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where she developed programs on nonprofit infrastructure and youth civic engagement that received national acclaim. She is also a widely published author on a range of issues—including philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, civic engagement, democracy, education, and health care—that have influenced public discourse and policy change. After living in New York City for many years, Cynthia moved to Providence seven years ago and feels privileged to finally land in a place with such a strong sense of community, diversity, and commitment to helping the city be the best it can be, a core component of which is a robust news platform.

Fraser grew up in the Providence area, relocated several times and returned for good to the city in 1985. He and his wife Betty were drawn to Providence as the perfect environment to raise their two sons and a daughter. They established and owned a publishing company in Providence -Manisses Communications Group Inc. -which provided resources for mental health and addiction professionals for two decades. Later he was co-publisher and owner with his wife of The Block Island Times. He has been in the publishing field for forty years. Fraser is a trustee emeritus of Brown University and was president of the Brown Alumni Association. He served on the boards of The Public’s Radio, The Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting at URI, Phoenix House, The Newsletter Publishers Association, Peace Corps Iran Association, Block Island Residents Association and the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence He is a graduate of Brown University and holds a masters degree from Rutgers University where he studied under an Eagleton Fellowship. He served in the Peace Corps in Iran. Fraser is privileged to be part of The Providence Eye which he believes fills an urgent need for news of Providence essential to the well being of the city.

Rochelle Lee is a long time resident of Providence, who currently resides in Elmwood after several years of living in South Providence. Much of her personal time is committed to supporting anti-poverty and social justice initiatives which connects to her work as an urban planner.  Her work is intended to empower grassroots communities to engage in impactful economic development programs. Rochelle’s career includes more than three decades working in a variety of professional roles investing in working poor neighborhoods, including working in human services, public education, economic developing and financing affordable housing. In that capacity, she worked with many nonprofits throughout the City’s neighborhoods.

Her personal interests include photography, travel, African American History and Art, supporting grassroots led health and wellness, equity and civil rights projects. As an ears to the ground local information that speaks from the voices of people who live and work in our neighborhoods, PVD Eye will contribute to bringing community members together to share and learn from one another. She is a member of the RI Transit Riders, Knight Memorial Friends Group and the grassroots Environmental Justice organizations such as Community Health Innovations of RI, Native Green and Slingshot, an organizing project of the Conservation Law Foundation. She is committed to promoting voter and civic education in under represented and working poor neighborhoods, strengthening civic education in public schools and lifting up access and opportunities for people to inform and influence public policy decisions.

Marsha Miller has lived in Providence since 1988 working as a family doctor at RIGHA, Harvard Community Health Plan, and at Brown Health Services, the latter for the last 20 years. She considers Providence to have been an enlivening place to call home and grow with her family. When not working on the Cultural Calendar at The PVD Eye, you may find her taking ballet classes at AS220, playing pickle ball at Nathan Bishop, or riding her bike to the store. She believes that Providence has vibrant theatre, dance, music, and art, and is hoping that the Cultural Calendar will let people know what they may want to go and see.

Alicia Pratt is the Coordinator for a Multilingual Rhode Island, a local non-profit that supports the expansion of multilingualism through advocacy and opportunities so that Rhode Island can be a truly multilingual state. She’s actively involved in the Providence community as part of the Steering Committee at PVD Things, a cooperative tool lending library in Olneyville, as well as part of the on-demand poetry group PVD Poetry.

Carole Saltz is a new-ish resident of Providence after a lifetime in NYC–and very happy to be here. Before retiring in 2019, I was, for more than 30 years, Director of Teachers College Press at Teachers College, Columbia University where I oversaw operations and staff with a special concentration in editorial acquisitions and a personal interest in arts education, early childhood, and social justice education. The PVD Eye, while a new enterprise, continues a direction that has been important to me throughout my life: to contribute to the development of ideas that can make a difference in the world. She feels that The PVD Eye has become a wonderful way to contribute to her new community while at the same time learning about this vibrant, arts-filled, complex, culturally-rich city. Carole currently serves on the board of the Maxine Greene Institute (and was a founding member of the Foundation for Social Imagination, the Arts, and Education) and provides editorial consulting to the Center for Human Development at CUNY Grad Center.

Deborah Schimberg has believed in Providence ever since she moved here to go to Brown University in 1975. She finds the city fascinating and frustrating, both, and has spent her professional life, effectively, as a serial social entrepreneur, focusing on initiatives in a variety of sectors. Collaborating with many other people, she founded a variety of nonprofit and community organizations, and a small business. Whether for-profit, nonprofit, or hybrid entities, she is committed to creating financial and organizational sustainability. The Providence Eye brings together years of experience and investment in the city, and she sees it as everyone’s project to knit the city together.

Julie Van Noppen fell in love with Providence as an undergraduate at Brown. She says, “It is a wholly singular place- historic, mysterious and unapologetically blasphemous. Roger Williams is my hero- standing up to those Massachusetts Puritans took balls and he was the poster boy of community activists- learned multiple Indian languages and advocated for peace. Separation of church and state. His legacy is Providence, a place to find who you are, not who others think you should be. He was a class dude- I’d vote him governor again in a heartbeat.” Julie is celebrating her fortieth year living and working as a muscle therapist and yoga teacher on the West side of Providence. She and her husband Mark have three children, all fierce advocates of community diversity and city living.